DISA Suspends $1.6B VMWare RFP Deadline Amid Protests

The Defense Information Systems Agency February 19 suspended indefinitely the deadline for proposals for a company under common license giant VMWare virtualization servers, which would be worth $ 1.6 billion.The request for proposals, grant of maintenance of software and licenses, issued February 9, with applications due by February 17th and final proposals due February 23. But on February 19 DISA released an update for the PP to note that the term would be suspended "until further notice sufficient to allow the government to respond to questions received time.

The extension of the term is after more protests offer a heated response in the acquisition community.The defense contractor brand aims to consolidate in a single agreement for support to departments of Defense for more than two million licensed VMWare and reduce the administration of more than 9,270 contract VMWare separate operations that have occurred in the last five years, according to documents justifying the sole source DISA agreement.

Software VMWare is fully implemented and integrated into the Department of Defense and has been for over 11 years. VMWare has become the standard architecture, state documents, obscuring the percentage of virtualized environments DoD involved. Support brand continues software is required in order to maintain uniformity, resolution of common problems and service techniques. Due to the proprietary nature of the software code would not be possible that another brand of software to provide software support for the current inventory VMWare license.

But the agreement goes beyond server virtualization business dominates.It VMWare VMWare also includes desktop software-as-a-service, desktop virtualization, virtual storage, and more, and has sparked controversy in the contracting community according to the Washington Report on Technology says that the four companies submitted prior to the award protest with the Government Accountability Office. Protests by Amazon Web Services, Citrix Systems, Minburn Technology Group and Nutanix say the proposed contract unduly restrict competition.

Sources say that the agreement limits competition and VMWare give an unfair advantage, and that the close relationship between liberation and proposed term discouraged parts vendors.Large questions rationale document request were heavily edited by DISA, including market research, determining fair and reasonable price, list of sources involved, and the actions the Agency may request to remove or overcome obstacles took exception to full and open competition.Increasingly DISA is looking to license agreements or joint Jelas company as a way to improve efficiency and savings.

The operational component is the acquisition of a part and the acquisition looking TCO and perspective for life and simplicity. This is critical for the trip as a department, "Alfred Rivera, director of business center and development of DISA, said in October." How to make acquisitions that will not only benefit one community, but a whole [number of] the community? A decision by the GAO protest is due June 1st.

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VCP550D Sample Question : 3

QUESTION 3:

A vSphere administrator deleted a vApp from disk. A second administrator needs the virtual machines that were contained in the vApp. What should the first administrator do to make the virtual machines available?

A. Recover the virtual machines from backup
B. Add the virtual machines back into inventory
C. Undelete the vApp
D. Recover the virtual machines from Stranded Items

Answer: A

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Unisys Brings Cloud Management, VMware Support to Forward Systems

New models of integrated calculation Unisys also use the latest Intel Xeon chip, with enhancements that improves performance and automation.

Unisys is making it easier for organizations that exploit the attacker integrated supplier of computing platforms to provide and manage their critical workloads to the business through the cloud and in the structures of the data center environments.Unisys officials are making improvements to the platform Adelante is the ability to integrate the management software provider's cloud Choreographer, allowing provisioning and managing workloads automated, and support for VMware applications. Unisys is also arming some of their newer systems Adelante with the latest Intel Xeon processors.

The new features announced February 17, are designed to allow companies use more easily to the platform forward in hybrid cloud environments, according to Rob Cashman, vice president of mission critical servers and solutions for Unisys. By increasing the power of the platform and enable support for automation capabilities choreographer, we are giving IT managers the extraordinary flexibility to take exactly the clouds and data center resources they need to respond in real time to a sudden challenges and new business opportunities, Cashman said in a statement.

Unisys officials for several years have been the migration of its ClearPath mainframe processors Intel x86, and have launched specialty engines for Windows and applications that help them function better in the ClearPath systems based on Linux. In October 2013, Unisys has launched its processing platform that combines forward Unisys s-Par 'partitioning technology with the virtualization capabilities of Intel chips to create fabric architecture capable of managing high-end applications, reducing the number of physical servers required and capital spending cut by up to 60 percent.

Peer Technology is used to deliver x86 servers, storage and storage partitions, offering businesses greater flexibility, scalability and agility in provisioning and managing workloads in hybrid environments of high level.In a conference call on January 29 to discuss the latest quarterly financial data of the company, Peter Altabef, who was named president and CEO of Unisys in December, said forward is a fundamental part of the future plans of the seller.

I have no doubt that forward and caution [security technology based on software from Unisys]  remain important initiatives for us, said Altabef, according to a transcript on Seeking Alpha. To put forward in the context it is used as an integral part of our new ClearPath systems we ship. So go ahead and ClearPath are actually integrating together for many of our new customers and existing customers.

The ability to integrate the Choreographer software allows henceforth companies to reduce the time required for the provision of the platform, automating the management of virtual workloads in the data center and private clouds that do not only leverage technology VMware, but also work on the clouds, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure platform.

With the support of workloads based on VMware, users can enable applications running on partitions Move to interoperate with workloads on VMware virtual machines on high-speed interconnect that is developing tissues, which speeds up the transfer rate data, reducing bottlenecks, according to officials of Unisys.

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VCP550D Sample Question : 2

QUESTION 2:

A vSphere administrator is configuring a fully automated DRS cluster and determines that DRS is not balancing virtual machine workloads.

What condition could cause this behavior?

A. vMotion is not properly configured on the hosts in the cluster.
B. HA is not properly configured on the hosts in the cluster.
C. The DRS threshold is configured on the most aggressive setting.
D. Some of the virtual machines have been disabled from DRS.

Answer: A

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VMware Vets Unveil Software Defined Storage Startup, Raise $34M

Springpath, a startup founded by VMware veterans that has been building a software defined storage platform that isn’t tied to any specific hardware, came out of stealth today, announcing $34 million in funding by New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. The Sunnyvale, California-based company operated in stealth mode as Storvisor.

Springpath says its storage and data management software provides reliable and scalable storage services. The basic premise of its approach is to break reliance on capital-intensive hardware that this type of software and functionality are often coupled with.The software-only platform runs on standard servers and decouples data from the application layer in what the company said was a simple-to-implement way that is platform- , hardware- , and application-agnostic. It is sold sold on a subscription basis.

The company doubled its vision Independent Infrastructure. At the core of the platform is what he calls the HALO architecture, which means objects Log-structured Hardware agnostic. This architecture is built from scratch, using different pieces of intellectual property.Storage is still using the technology of the 90s, and companies are plagued by costly and inflexible silos as a result, Ravi Parthasarathy, vice president of product management Stringpath he said. He believes that storage arrays will be history, replaced by software defined storage servers commodity below.

Hardware Silos created inefficient use of product, he said. On the storage side, each provider offers their own way of handling the data. We offer a unique data platform which is 100 percent of the software. Now, customers have the freedom to buy what they want servers, add the servers as they want and data platform scales with him. We will provide all enterprise-class features such as snapshots and clones, creating policies for disaster recovery. Springpath CEO and cofounder Mallik Mahalingam, along with other co-founder Krishna Yadappanavar are alumni of VMware. Both were instrumental in pioneering technology as the file system virtual machine Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), a system of popular network virtualization, and (VFMs), the file system widely deployed in VMware environments.

Mahalingam spent nearly 10 years as a senior engineer at VMware, where he worked on a multitude of projects including vSphere Storage Networking and IO. He spent four years as a researcher at HP Labs before joining VMware. Yadappanavar tenure at VMware lasted about eight years. Both left the giant of virtualization in 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile, almost simultaneously was Storvisor founded.Modern data centers require a software platform versatile and resilient data that runs on commodity hardware infrastructure based on standard servers and is compatible with the needs of virtualized data management, containers, big data, and other emerging environments, Mahalingam said.

The company has key technology partnerships in place with VMware, OpenStack, and Docker. It is working with manufacturers like Cisco, Dell, HP, Lenovo and. Springpath also announced a distribution agreement with Tech Data, which will give solution providers access to servers preloaded with your company software.The ran a beta version of a couple dozen customers through a variety of vertical markets for use cases such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, test and development, infrastructure consolidation, databases, and remote or branch offices.

The movement data center to a server-based ecosystem is well on its way, and Springpath software platform allows companies to support their various application environments using standard servers and seems to fit well into this trend macro "said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst Moor Knowledge and Strategy, said in a statement." We were impressed with the ability of the solution to deliver the value of enterprise features and performance in a variety of servers from leading brands, options offered by companies without compromising their expectations.

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